Hazelnut
by irmaida
Summary: "'My name's Rey, by the way. Rey Hawthorne.' 'Hazelle Rollins,' she replies. Rey laughs. 'Hazelle, like the hazelnuts.' She is about to leave when Rey presses a single hazelnut into her palm. She begins to protest but all Rey does is shrug and smile and he disappears before she can give it back." The life and times of Hazelle Rollins Hawthorne.


_Hazelnut_

\

Worn black shoes click as twelve-year-old Hazelle Cheryl Rollins skips along the sidewalk, She's just survived her first Reaping, and she could not be more relieved or happy. Not only was she spared from the Hunger Games; all of her friends made it through safe.

She reaches home and is immediately encased in a crushing hug from her mother, who has tears of relief streaming down her face.

"It's okay, Mom," Hazelle says, twirling around so her skirt flares. "I'm safe!"

Her mother smiles and, as a surprise, brings out a shiny new pair of black shoes. Hazelle gasps and squeals. Hazelle's had her old pair of shoes since she was ten, but new shoes are a rare occurrence in the Seam. Of course, Hazelle does have the benefit of being an only child with doting parents. She beams at her mother and quickly skips outside to show off her new shoes. She and her friends have survived the Reaping _and _she has new shoes. This is the best day of her life.

She forgets that somewhere else in the District, two other children and their families are crying.

\

Girly girls, at least the stereotypical ones, don't exist in the Seam.

It is impossible for the stereotypical blonde-haired, skirt-loving, boy-flirting, fangirling girly girl to exist where money is scarce, starvation is a very real concept, and everyone has dark hair.

But Hazelle Rollins is the Seam-equivalent to a stereotypical girly girl. Everyone knows it. Some of the kinder girls from the Town will even eat lunch with her every now and then to gossip about boys and haircuts and fashion trends.

She isn't mean or spoiled. She too takes tesserae for her family and wears hand-me-downs and lives in absolute fear of the Hunger Games. It's simply her carefree, shallow attitude, the innocent outlook that everything and everyone in the world is happy and okay.

\

Her father gets sick one week and has to spend an entire month out of the mines.

Money begins running low, and Hazelle's mother begins cutting hair and doing laundry to help bring a little bit of extra money into the house. Her mother is a tough yet kind woman, nothing like the girly girl she is, and she works her fingers off during the cold winter week in which her father is sick. Hazelle will try to help, taking as much tesserae as possible, assisting her mother with the laundry, and bringing in her friends from the town who can afford to get their hair professionally cut. Hazelle's mother will work magic with the pair of scissors—doing layers and bangs and special bobs and styles.

Hazelle tried cutting her hair once, the way her mother did. She ended up having to wear a hat for the majority of three months.

Her father finally does heal enough for the mines, and money begins rolling back into the household. Her mother drops the laundry business, as she always hated it, but continues the haircutting business. Her mother eventually gets so good and well-known that even the snobbiest girls from Town will choose her over the town hairdresser.

\

It's just been a few days after the Quarter Quell, and Hazelle's never quite cared for who the tributes were as long as they weren't anyone close to her, but she can't help feel sorry for the twin sister of the girl that is Reaped.

The District seems more in mourning than usual, and the weather isn't helping much—the skies are dark and gray. She stares at the ground and her shoes drag on the ground as she walks home from school, when she almost runs over a thin little girl in a blue and green checkered skirt, with long, messy brown pigtails and unusually large gray eyes.

She doesn't know who the girl is, but she can't be more than twelve and is staring up into her face as if she is some sort of goddess.

"Your mom cuts hair very nicely," says the little girl bashfully.

Hazelle smiles. "Yes, she does." Sensing a business opportunity, she says, "She could probably do your hair for a couple coins."

The girl sighs and pulls at one of her brown pigtails. "I don't have any money."

"Oh," Hazelle says quietly. She should have figured; families that come from their side of town don't have any money to spare for something as indulgent as a haircut. But she can't offer to give the haircut for free—her mother runs a business. She is about to say goodbye and leave when she hears the little girl exclaim.

"I know!" The girl shuffles around in her backpack and takes out a rumpled bag. "It's hazelnuts. I hate hazelnuts but some people like them and my brother got them from the forest and says they're worth a lot. Could your mom cut my hair for these?"

Suddenly, there are footsteps, and a boy appears at the little girl's side. Hazelle recognizes him from some of her classes but can't place a name onto the face. "Karla," he says, out of breath, "I've been looking all over for you." Noticing the bag of hazelnuts in Hazelle's hand, he then says, "And you know you're not supposed to give food for free, no matter how much you hate it."

"But it's not for free!" Karla insists. "I'm going to use them to pay for a haircut."

The boy's mouth drops open and closes and flops like a fish, and he takes on a sour look. "Karla, either we trade the hazelnuts for something useful or we eat them. Mom can cut your hair when we get home."

Karla looks at the ground, ashamed. "The girls at school were teasing me because I get home haircuts. I want my hair to look good like theirs."

The boy keeps his sour look, but Hazelle softens. She hands back the hazelnuts and says, "Don't worry, Karla. I'm sure my mom can give you a trim for free. No big deal."

Karla looks up and squeals. "Let's go now!" The little girl begins rushing towards Hazelle's house, pigtails flying behind. How Karla knows where Hazelle lives, Hazelle has no idea. But she suspects that Karla's wanted a haircut for quite a while. She smiles and is about to go follow Karla when she feels a hand on her wrist.

"What do you want?" asks the boy, Karla's older brother, his tone weary and suspicious.

"Nothing," she shrugs. "It's just a trim." Somehow she knows that her mother will be okay with giving Karla a short trim. Her mother was always compassionate in addition to being tough, and her small family of three most likely survive solely on tesserae and her father's mining salary.

The boy seems to read this on Hazelle's face and loosens. "Okay." He smiles and pauses. "My name's Rey, by the way. Rey Hawthorne."

"Hazelle Cheryl Rollins," she replies.

Rey laughs. "Hazelle, like the hazelnuts?"

She smiles. It is a bit funny. "Just like so."

She is about to leave when Rey presses a single hazelnut into her palm. She begins to protest but all Rey does is shrug and smile and he disappears before she can give it back.

\

Five years later, Hazelle is twenty-one years old and getting married to Rey Hawthorne.

Her father hugs her and even tears up a bit when she tells him, and Hazelle's mother helps her pick out the rented white dress and pins Hazelle's hair into an elegant bun. Hazelle looks at her reflection in the mirror, and her girly girl side can't help but to twirl and squeal and be utterly excited.

She meets Rey at the Justice Building, looking absolutely dashing in a clean suit and the two of them get their marriage papers signed together. In front of their families, they vow to take care of each other forever while toasting a fresh loaf of bread. Rey whispers in her ear, words meant for her only, how beautiful she looks in her dress. He then takes out a bag of hazelnuts, taken fresh from the forest, and she feels that she's just married the sweetest man in the universe.

It's the happiest day of her life.

\

As the years pass, Rey is the one that keeps the family on its shoulders.

Not only does Rey work in the mines, he hunts in the woods every Sunday. And when their oldest son, Gale, gets old enough, he begins teaching Gale how to hunt as well, and soon Gale's traps are bringing in fresh meat and things to trade and, every now and then, a bag of hazelnuts. Hazelle stays home and raises the children and cooks and cleans, and whenever she has some downtime, she'll gossip with her friends about everything from home remedies to new dresses, or go and visit her aging mother.

Hazelle still considers herself the Seam-equivalent of a girly girl. So does anyone who's close to her, including Rey and her three sons.

She's pregnant again, and she prays that it will be a daughter so that she can dress her up and take her to her mother for haircuts and have someone to gossip with.

\

Rey's dead.

Killed.

In a mine accident.

The day she hears the news, she finds herself in the bathroom retching out anything and everything she's eaten in the past 24 hours.

Rey's dead, she has three children on her hands and a fourth one on the way, and absolutely no way to support herself.

How will they survive? How will she survive? Once everything she's eaten is out of her, she leans against the bathroom wall, ignoring Gale and Vick's cries, and refuses to come out. Everything hurts—her swollen stomach, her lungs, her head, her limbs.

Her heart.

There's no way she can do this alone.

\

For the first two days after Rey's death, they manage to survive off what Gale catches and the little money they have left.

Then Hazelle gives birth to her fourth child, a beautiful baby girl she names Posy, the beautiful baby girl that she's always dreamed of, but she doesn't dare celebrate when she knows the child will probably be dead of starvation within a month.

Running out of money and with nobody to lean on, Hazelle goes to visit her aging mother for advice, only to find that her tough mother is sick with age and bedridden. Her last resort is gone.

And she bursts into tears.

"What's wrong?" her mother immediately asks, inviting Hazelle in and gesturing for her to sit on a chair near the bed. "After-baby blues?"

Hazelle sits down and automatically begins to blubber. "M-more than that, I can't do this anymore! Rey's dead and there's nobody to lean on and _I can't do this_! Mom, I have three boys to feed and myself of course, and then yesterday little Posy came out, and I can't work in the mines or even hunt in the woods because I have children to raise… I can't do this, I'm not Rey; I'm the dependent girly girl that ran off to show off her new shoes to her friends and gossiped about boys while you gave the girls haircuts. I-I'm not even you."

She looks down at the ground and feels ashamed as she remembers how her mother kept all of them on their toes the week her father was sick, and how even now her mother has managed to stay alive and support herself by continuing to cut hair after her father died a few years ago.

To Hazelle's surprise, her mother smiles. "You say you can't do it because you're a girly girl?"

Hazelle doesn't look up. "Maybe some girls could do it, tough girls like you Mom, but not me. My sons and the little one and I are all going to die, and all because of me…" Tears leak out of her eyes.

And to Hazelle's even greater surprise, her mother chuckles. "Ah, but you see, Hazelle, _I _was a girly girl too. I still am." Hazelle automatically looks up as her brain attempts to process this new information. Her mother continues, "How do you think I knew how to cut hair that well?"

And that is when images come flooding to Hazelle, images so sharp and obvious that Hazelle can't believe that she never realized it before. She remembers how her mother knew how to manipulate hair to make it frame the face, and how on her first date, her mother was the one that picked out her outfit and gave her boy advice, how while other girls complained on how old-fashioned and un-stylish their mother was, Hazelle never had any such complaints. But this image doesn't seem to fit with the tough-as-nails survivor that Hazelle knows her mother also was.

"Then how did you do it?" she blurts out.

Her mother smiles. "Anyone can do it, Hazelle. I had a family to keep alive, and I was willing to do anything for them. And I know you can too, Hazelle."

Her mother closes her eyes, and somehow Hazelle knows that they won't be opening again. But at the same time, Hazelle knows she'll survive it.

She's got a family to keep alive, and she's willing to do anything for them.

\

She could never cut hair like her mother did, but she remembers how her mother briefly had a laundry business and realizes that she can definitely wash clothes.

So she goes off to the streets to hunt for work. She offers services the way her mother used to, and to her surprise, several of her old town friends soon become regular business customers. Finally, Hazelle has money coming in, and as she goes around town with a laundry hamper and sews clothes for her children, she feels _useful_, and strangely enough, _free _almost.

For the first time in her life, she's standing on her own two feet.

\

Several years later, after the Hunger Games, after the Rebellion and the war, after everything, Hazelle settles down in District 2 with Rory, Vick, and Posy.

Her oldest son, Gale, is somewhere else in the District with a good, money-earning job. Hazelle is worried for Gale, for she knows that he's suffered very much in this war—unimaginable loss and heartbreak—but somehow she knows instinctively that the best thing for her to do is stay out of the scene until her Gale comes back to her. Still, she makes sure that she doesn't live too far from her oldest son so that he can come visit any time, and sends him holiday cards and phones often.

More years pass. Gale eventually does seem to recover, although he is never quite the same. Rory gets married, and Vick leaves her to go to a school in Four. Posy stays with her the longest, lingers a while, and then too leaves the nest.

A kind woman that lives near her notices her talent for sewing clothes and offers her a job as a seamstress. Between her new job and grandkids, Hazelle stays busy and on her feet even in her old age.

One day, her daughter Posy comes to visit her. Visits from Posy are fairly common, so she looks up expecting a pleasant afternoon of reminiscing and perhaps discussing baby names, for Posy is pregnant with a little baby girl that is due in just a few days.

Instead finds that her daughter in near tears.

And that her daughter's stomach is much too small for a woman in her last month of pregnancy.

"You gave birth!" she exclaims.

Posy's voice quivers, and Hazelle knows what she is going to say right before Posy says it. "The baby died on the way out. A stillborn."

Posy sits down on Hazelle's dining table and manages to keep her composure for a few more seconds before bursting into tears. "Oh, Mom, I don't know how you did it. Gale and Rory and Vick always say how when Dad died, you were just so strong and kept the family morale going and were out of on the streets looking for work less than a week after you gave birth to me. It must have hurt you so much when Dad just died, but you just k-kept going. I-I can't do that. I'm not you."

Hazelle suddenly remembers a conversation, a different conversation she had with her own mother several years ago, and her lips twitch upward into a smile. She wonders if, when Posy grows up, she will give her own daughter the same speech.

"Oh, Posy," says Hazelle, in a tone as soothing as possible. "I was once just like you…"

* * *

_So, if you've read any of my other works, you know I'm a huge Hunger Games pre-generation fan. I was just scanning through my fics and realized I had absolutely nothing on the Hawthorne pre-generation! Thus, this fic came out. I just love Hazelle. Review, please? _


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